“Money from the United States, Abu Dhabi and Brunei is backing Infinity Racing Partners, the consortium which has acquired 35 percent of the Lotus F1 team ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ and the man behind has worked as a FOX News analyst.”

Eric Boullier: “We didn’t have five podiums at the start of the season just by chance. It is because the package is competitive – we may struggle sometimes on some tracks, but we know this know and we have to work on this now to avoid this happening again this season on low-energy tracks.”

“Murray Walker says he is concentrating on “getting back to form as quickly as I possibly can” after being diagnosed with cancer.”

Mark Webber would be embraced by all if he returned to sportscars, says Allan McNish (Huffington Post)

Allan McNish: “If Mark did decide to come we would all embrace him with open arms ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ until the first corner. He wouldn?óÔé¼Ôäót want it any other way! He?óÔé¼Ôäós a hard charger, he?óÔé¼Ôäós intelligent, he?óÔé¼Ôäós a thinker, he?óÔé¼Ôäós a nice person, he?óÔé¼Ôäód be good in the paddock.”

“A host of luxury items and experiences will be sold throughout the night as part of the exciting auctions and raffle, enabling us to raise vital funds towards the work of Great Ormond Street Hospital.”

“The Formula One driver and McLaren’s executive director discuss the fine margins that separate success from failure in top level motor sport ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ and why coming first is not always what the sponsors want.”

Tweets

Just spoken to Murray Walker. He's in fine fettle. Said broken pelvis was a blessing in disguise. He thanked all for their kind wishes. #F1

Comment of the day

With Silverstone yet to sell out of tickets for the British Grand Prix, @jlracing thinks the reasons fans are staying away has less to do with the lack of British success this year and more to do with the ticket prices…

I have to say the tickets at Silverstone are very expensive.
I and a friend of mine go to the GP at the Nurburgring in a few weeks time.
We have weekend tickets for standing places in front of the chicane, and they cost us ?é?ú76 per person (89 euros).

Furthermore we sleep at a camping for ?é?ú60 (70 euros) per person, including parking the car.

So for the whole weekend we pay only ?é?ú136.
And even that is cheaper than the cheapest tickets at Silverstone.@jlracing

59 comments on Genii Capital sell 35 per cent stake in Lotus

My first thought when seeing the headline was that it was a (Renault-Nissan) Infiniti deal, was surprised when I read the article and found “Infinity Racing group – made up of private investors from America, Abu Dhabi and an unidentified oil producing nation” was a different entity altogether.

Shall we start the speculation about the who the unidentified oil producing nation really is ?
I’ll kick it off with Iraq as I reckon the one thing the Iraqi people are really craving right now is part ownership of an F1 team :-)

Actually, I was thinking that Bernie could make more money by going to Somalia. People would volunteer for lining a track for a couple $$ a day or a pound of rice and millions would be saved on lining a track with rails, run off areas, and such unnecessary expenses. And the people could be moved around if the track did not meek Ferraris approvalâ€¦ jus a wee bit of humor, RnR

It is not. The company linked to RB is Infiniti, a brand of Nissan. Infinity is to Nissan what Lexus is to Toyota.
The company in question here is Infinity Racing Group, notice the y in Infinity:)
So they have nothing to do with each other but nearly identical names.

I would say there’s so much to do, and only a limited amount of hours in the day to do them, so having others take on certain tasks is a sign of the site growing, who knows, maybe in time F1Fanatic will be able to keep a team of reporters, editors and support!

From Le Mans comes the news today that Lotus LMP2 might not make to the race because some essential items from the team have been seized due to the failure in meeting some conditions on the contracts with a supplier of parts for the suspension and the steering column. This is what Radio Le Mans and AutoHebdo are reporting, but there is lack of some information, which is expected to be fixed with a press release from the team tomorrow. I’ve read the situation has to be solved by Friday.

Funny that “Lotus-Praga” combination. An demised but recently resurrected (although not building cars) Czech luxury car brand and an almost defunct but still in operation sports car company from the UK on one LMP2 car (which is made by someone else – who actually knows how to build an LMP car – Adess) @npf1

Lotus has built rigorously nothing in LMP2. The chassis is made by a German company called Adess, the team is run by Colin Kolles, the chassis name is T128 just to say that Lotus can’t let go of their naming dispute with Tony Fernandes, and the engine is a Judd V8. So the name “Lotus T128-Praga” is 100% rebranding!
Nonetheless, the cars look good and the driver line-up is promising (James Rossiter and Christophe Bouchut are among the drivers), so it would be a shame if they didn’t make it.

Just read the paper recomended by @scarbsF1, excellent highly detailed paper which, despite not only my eyes but my brain glazing over at all the abbreviations, should be read by everybody who wants to express an opinion not only on the new engines but on all the “cost saving” regulations that have been imposed on F1.

It also perfectly shows how the current KERS rules (and potentially the new ones too) are not all that great an idea of how to use a hybrid power train, instead of making it a boost (push to pass button) they should do away with that and focus on getting it to accelerate the car regularly.

@hohum great document, but I wonder why the example they mention to compare a KERSed car with one without it is using Monaco as a reference track, when everybody knows Monaco is an “exception to the rule” respect to modern F1 tracks.

I used to scoff at people complaining about ticket prices, after all F1 is the most expensive sport in the world so that’s logical right?

However, this year I’ll be attending my first GP (at Austin) and now I get it, it’s not just the ticket prices that are inflated, its also everything else!!!
If this wasn’t the last year of the V8 engine I would think twice before spending all that money.

Oh wow, a peaky v8 thats been rev limited to 18000rpm and not developed in the last 5 years or so now, cutting edge stuff……

And next year? Well yay its the dull (have you all heard a v6 before) sounding, formula electric car conservation championship where the person that drives to the best engineered target lap time and doesnt have an ERS failure (how many of those will there be, and without it its literally race over, the car wont even have enough fuel to finish lol) wins the championship.

Wow, real racing at its best, thanks for going senile recently but still remembering how much you love money Bernie! Great for the sport!

It’s so painful to see people blame everything they dislike on mister Ecclestone. Ecclestone never wanted to see the V10 engines go and he’s against the departure of the V8’s as well. He has no influence on engine regulations, that’s the FIA’s job.

I’ve been following F1 since 1998 and everything ever in F1 since has been blamed on Bernie. I guess he’s the Dark Knight of F1.

He basically took a sport by and for enthusiasts by the horns, professionalized it, got TV involved, got car manufacturers involved, got the media involved and got the sport out of the world of event organizers who think having a doctor or medicopter around is a joke, and into the safety of today, along with Sid Watkins and Max Mosley.

If F1 wasn’t being run as a business, teams would have left to other series, drivers would go make millions in NASCAR or Indycars and guys like Webber would have never stayed from Le Mans. I don’t doubt some people would enjoy a free-for-all F1, going around tracks like Brands Hatch, Knockhill, Zandvoort, Norisring and Valencia, but despite F1 going further away form Europe, I’m glad it keeps growing and its business is represented by someone who has been involved with the sport as a driver, team boss, teams representative and has close ties to the governing body.

@npf1,@roald, F1 was very successful before Bernie got involved, and while the WDC and WCC races were held mostly in Europe and N.America F1 teams and drivers raced in Australia, New Zealand, S.Africa, S.America and Japan, this how guys like Brabham, McLaren, Hill(USA), etc. came to F1.
What fuelled the growth of F1 was not Bernie but the revolution in TV when satellites allowed “live” broadcasts to be viewed worldwide.

And Bernie was there to make sure the rights to broadcast F1 into the world was getting money towards the teams.

I might disagree with the way the money is spread over the teams, but Bernie saw an opportunity there and took it, like any great entrepreneur would. He could have also taken all of the TV revenue, or F1 could have missed that call completely.

I wouldn’t worry about engineered lap times for next year – if Pirelli are the tyre manufacturers, they’ll create tyres that can last several race distances! They took a risk have now been told they cannot do anything to rectify the problem. On that basis, they will go as safe with the tyres as possible.

I have to agree with COTD. Silverstone, despite being my nearest race track, is an expensive trip to plan.
Last time I cut it down to just a Sunday ticket, to avoid the additional costs.
If the WEC race was on a weekend when I was free this year I would have gone and seen that instead as the prices are far more reasonable.

I think paying money to go to a track and watch F1 is the biggest waste of money I can think of.

If you want a decent grandstand seat, we’re talking Â£200 for a single day. You spend 2 hours in a queue getting in and once you are there’s little action other than the F1 on the Sunday and you probably miss the GP2 whilst stuck in the queue to get in anyway.

So you head to your cramped seat, and you have 1 hour 30 minutes of entertainment, although it’s less than that because the cars only come by once a month.

Unless you have incredibly exclusive tickets you can’t go anywhere of any interest other than your grandstand seat.

Then you have the luxury spend 3 hours in a queue getting out of the car park.

Â£250 entrance fee plus many hours of unpaid time for the rest of the day just isn’t worth it for what ultimately boils down to maybe an hour of watching and listening to F1 cars. Stay at home and watch it on TV, or as @chalky says, spend a weekend at something like the WEC. Â£50 for an entire weekend including camping with near enough unlimited access to the entire track and paddock, and long race with plenty of opportunity to view the action from different vantage points.

Button on success in F1: “Well, you just cruise around with your modest skill set in inferior teams for a decade and hope that some bloke comes around to design a grossly illegal car that’s three seconds faster than the rest of the field. Easy as that!”